I'm built like a steakhouse, but I handle like a bistro.

Oh, hey, speaking of food: when I'm happy, I sing to my food before I eat it. I sing happy little nommy songs to them before I put them in my chomping maw, en route to my gastric chamber. I'm not sure why I sing to my food. Maybe it's a lullaby? You'll either think this is hilarious, or want to punch me in the crotch.

And another sideways leap: I love the phrase "pyloric sphincter." Also: "pelvic splanchnic ganglion."

If you have gathered from reading these first few paragraphs that I am entirely too fond of Futurama, you would be entirely too right.

(Suh. Phinc. Terrrrr. I like that word. I just do. Also, I'm tired and not entirely coherent. The wages of law school are sleep deprivation. Also, procrastination.)

What follows is a bundle of disjointedness disguised as a series of facts about me; those of you seeking a thesis sentence in the next paragraph are doomed to failure.

I'm a big ole pushover, despite my crusty, cussy exterior. I'm not as smart as I like to think I am. I have a strong skeptical streak; "Science: It works, bitches" is one of the best catch-phrases ever. I am honest, sometimes tactlessly so, to the people I love, though I strive to be kind. I am savagely thundertitted, and all my sweaters confirm this fact. I don't like being poked with sharp sticks, but then, I'm not sure who does; however, now that I've brought it up, I'm sure I'll be able to find thousands of pointy-stick-poking fetishists on the Internet.

Speaking of which: I love fucking around on the Internet. I love doing it almost as much as I love doing your mom.

I have left several Advanced User Features undocumented here, but then I wouldn't want to shock your delicate constitution.

At the time of writing, this profile is the number 1 Google search result for the exact phrase "I'm curtains." This didn't use to be the case. I won't tell you the torments I endured when I noticed I'd dropped to the second page. However, I've returned as the alpha of the of "I'm curtains" pack, and have stayed that way for well over a year. (I picture this profile as being the Akela of sorts to the search results; it sits on the Council Rock, knowing that one day, it will miss the kill, and a younger, more relevant webpage will tear its throat out and take its place. Which makes me Mowgli, I suppose, though I doubt Google would be too impressed if I wave a flaming branch at it.) Hanyway. We'll see how long this lasts. Ultimately, I can do nothing but surrender myself to the capriciousness of search algorithms.

Update as of 8/11/08: I have fallen to fourth place. Let the wailing of the women begin.

Third year of law school! Final year! Hell yeah, motherfuckers! This year, I am an International Woman of Mystery. And also writing about invertebrate conservation. Ah, brick walls. How I love smashing my head against thee.

Sadly, however, I'm going to graduate into a pretty goddamn dire job market. I may, in fact, be in grad school again next year.

In between running around like a madwoman, I'm trying to make sure I keep my closest friends close to me, even though a distressing number of them live in far-flung locations like Melbourne and Marseilles, as well as exotic locales like Seattle and Tempe.

I am ridiculously good at being verbose.

I am not so good at being concise.

I am going to attempt the latter in this one section, just for a change of pace.

For some strange reason, people tend to assume I'm either vegan or vegetarian when they first meet me. Then I scarf down a whole pound of bloody-rare ribeye in one sitting as they watch in horrified wonder. When my hair is really short, there also seems to be a presumption of dykiness, which pleases me a great deal, because dykey girls with really short hair are hot.

I like a wide enough variety of things that my long list of loves will usually inspire both admiration and disgust in most people.

So:

Books: I read and love a lot of different genres, from scientific non-fiction to children's books to romance novels to historical fiction to SF/F. My lists are long and tiresome; if you want to know more, message me and we can squee over favorite books indefinitely, because I love me some book talkery.

Just Finished/Currently Reading: Jesus, I need to stop starting these things with "I finally got around to." That said: I finally got around to American Gods and Transmetropolitan. Both were excellent and exactly what I needed. (I want my own bowel disruptor. Mostly because I want something that has "Fatal Intestinal Maelstrom" as a setting.)

Music: Here are some names--names that I'm typing using my computer's keyboard; names that will then be stored on a server thousands of miles away from me; names that will sooner or later be called up and displayed on your screen; names that you'll be reading shortly. Electrons are pretty fucking cool, aren't they?

Annuals, Andrew Bird, Bat for Lashes, Menomena, Lemon Jelly, Genesis, Ratatat, Belle and Sebastian, The Black Keys, Islands, Broken Social Scene, Röyksöpp, Télépopmusik, Radiohead, Boards of Canada, Four Tet, Band of Horses, Wolf Parade, Beck, The Decemberists, PJ Harvey, Bloc Party, Blur, Interpol, The Shins, Rogue Wave, Underworld, John Vanderslice, Broadcast, The Crystal Skulls, Stars, Feist, Silversun Pickups, Sufjan Stevens, Nada Surf, Good News for People Who Love Bad News, Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, Yankee Foxtrot Hotel, OK Go's Oh No, Jurassic 5, old-school funk and hip hop, The Local Division, Komeda, A.C. Newman, Kaiser Chiefs, Fiona Apple, Regina Spektor, Basement Jaxx, Mogwai, Cut Chemist, Troublemakers, Neutral Milk Hotel, Grandaddy, The Magnetic Fields, The Postal Service, Iron and Wine, The Kinks, The Beatles, Electric 6, MC Chris, Franz Ferdinand, Swingle Singers.

Composers: The top four are JS Bach, Beethoven, Rachmaninoff and Tchaikovsky. When it comes to Dead White Composer music, I seem to go for either terrifyingly precise and mathematical, or big and emotional and messy. I'm currently working on getting to know more Ravel and Prokofiev.

Performers: Glenn Gould, Murray Perahia, Arcadi Volodos, Artur Rubinstein, Nigel Kennedy, Jascha Heifetz.

But if you really want to know what turns my crank, musically, you should message me and I'll make you a mix CD. This has worked out pretty well, though apologies if I take for-fucking-ever to get back to you. Specify whether you want to:

Groove

Groove Slow

Mope

Experience a Magical Grab-Bag of Random Crap

Remember, kids: this is about ME inflicting my musical tastes on YOU.

I can make a zip file, upload it to my webspace and you can download it and burn a disc, or I can mail you a disc, if you're brave enough to give your address to a strange chick on the Internet who may or may not turn out to actually be a sweaty, overweight 48-year-old man living in his mom's basement.

To the people who've written to me about this: Sorry I'm so horribly slow. Law school kind of ate me alive last year. I'm working on processing requests from, like, over a year ago. Cry.

Movies: Some random titles that I really enjoyed and/or thought were particularly excellent: Wall-E, The Dark Knight, Ong Bak, Dog Day Afternoon, Pan's Labyrinth, Capote, The Prestige, The Royal Tenenbaums, Jacob's Ladder, Buffalo 66, A Nightmare Before Christmas, Snatch, Yojimbo, Requiem for a Dream, Sin City, Igby Goes Down, Donnie Darko, Spirited Away, Best in Show, This is Spinal Tap, Harold and Maude, Trainspotting, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Adaptation, Pulp Fiction, Reservoir Dogs, Bottle Rocket, Rushmore, The Transporter, Dead Poets' Society and Cowboy Bebop: Knocking on Heaven's Door

When I get the opportunity to catch up on TV shows via DVD, I enjoy watching Battlestar Galactica, Supernatural, Samurai Champloo, Cowboy Bebop, Sealab 2021, The Office (I've only seen the British version), The Simpsons, Futurama, Harvey Birdman: Attorney At Law, Firefly, Scrubs and Monty Python.

Foods: I enjoy all sorts of cuisines; I refuse to pick a favorite. I will say that when I cook, I make a lot of shit from scratch. Angel food cake, pies, quiche, chicken stock, etc. Do not utter "Why don't you just use a cake mix?" in my presence, for lo, there will be much hurteration. I am Anthony Bourdain's bitch; his Les Halles Cookbook is just about as close to a kitchen bible as it gets for me. For baking, The Baker's Dozen Cookbook is indispensable. Everything else is noise.

I also have an unhealthy love for processed meat products like ham, hot dogs and Spam, though I don't allow myself to indulge very often. If it has smoke flavoring, I'll eat it, even if I know it's heinous. I blame my mom.

My new culinary hobbyhorse is fucking around with Indian cuisine. I may not ever be able to replicate my mother's incredibly delicious but incredibly complicated Chinese Malaysian curries, but by gum I'll have fun coming up with the best lamb vindaloo ever.

1. People to interact with.

2. Something alive and fuzzy and warm to love and talk to and take care of.

3. Something for my brain to chew over and digest, or material for it to shake and worry and occasionally pummel into submission--text is excellent for this, but moving pictures and conversations work as well.

4. Something to keep my ears happy.

5. A spoon. What's with people using forks to eat rice? That's just weird.

6. Your mom.

It's the Clash of the Transition Periods all up in this piece. I'm trying to figure out how my actions square up with long-held bits of my identity, not to mention terrifying things like What I'm Going to Do Once I Graduate. A perfectly ordinate amount of time is also spent thinking about the readings I've just completed, or feeling horribly guilty because I should be completing my readings instead of faffing around on a site like this.

All of this is on top of my daily slew of thoughts and observations about all things philosophical, political, sexual, musical, literary and scientific. My brain is a chatty motherfucker.

And never forget: I'm the Original Flavor Queen of Useless, Random Speculation. Don't fall for the Cherry or Diet variations. Their advertising campaigns are slick and shiny, sure, but they always leave this bizarre aftertaste on the back of your tongue. It's quite unpleasant.

Plotting mayhem and molestation. This night may or may not be the night the shaved gerbils dread the most. I'll never tell, and neither will they. But if you're really curious, allow me to point you towards my journal, where I used to record my Typical Friday Nights.

Many people point out that if something is typed out for all the Internets to read, then it's no longer private, is it? My response is, this space is reserved for the most private revelation you're willing to expose to the rapacious gaze of OKCupid users everywhere, which makes it a relative term. It doesn't need to be particularly private, and of course the thresholds vary drastically from person to person. This is comparable to a person who can honestly assert that the tallest American girl he's ever dated is 5'1", which isn't particularly tall when compared to the average American female population.

Right, now that the semantics are done with, here's the most private thing I'm willing to admit here:

I'm curtains.

If you don't know what it means, I'm not explaining it to you. It'll just add to my delightful air of mystique.

Another private thing to admit here: I have discovered that plumbing doesn't matter to me as much as I thought it did, though it matters a bit more than I'd like it to. I'm somewhere between 2.2 and e on the Kinsey Scale.

Also, I used to have a "less desiring of sex" award on my profile, which uniformly made all of my friends and lovers snorfle-laugh. I think it's because OKCupid is bad at picking up on the difference between wanting sex in and of itself, and desiring sex with specific partners.

You're not afraid of being covered with a light sheen of cat hair. If you like tender-hearted geek girls with filthy mouths. If you enjoy going to rock shows, or dancing to old-school funk, or watching breakdancers at the Good Foot. If you're OK with conducting an entertaining but sporadic correspondence with a girl with too many things to cram into too little free time (and believe me, I'm an expert at cramming--just ask your mom HA HA ZIIIING). If you've noticed that I'm both a) seeing someone, and b) looking only for friends, and you're still interested in hanging out with me and aren't harboring some sort of "Dude, hook ups on the sly are HOT!" delusions.